Centre Review 30 September 2003

1
Centre Review 30 September 2003

• Centre Managers Report
• Dr Anna Kenway

2
Report Structure

• Events
• Events held in the 2nd year.
• Statistics
• Visitor Programme
• Web
• Changes in the last year
• Statistics of usage
• Supporting the Community
• Staff, Buildings Finance

3
Events held in the 2nd Year(from 1 Aug 2002 to
31 Jul 2003)

• We have had 86 events (Year 1 figures in
  brackets)
• 11 project meetings ( 4)
• 11 research meetings ( 7)
• 25 workshops (17 1)
• 2 schools (0)
• 15 training sessions (8)
• 12 outreach events (3)
• 5 international meetings (1)
• 5 e-Science management meetings (7)
• (though the definitions are fuzzy!)

4
Basic Event Statistics
5
Basic Event Statistics
6
Types of events(statistics from this point
exclude GGF5)
7
Frequent Flyers
MPA (37)
8
UK Support
9
Is our International profile changing?
10
Industrial Involvement

• 194 registered users from 97 companies
• 133 different delegates have attended events (169
  event registrations) from 64 companies including
  not only
• IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Hewlett-Packard
• but also
• Apple, Astra Zeneca, BAE, Cisco, Honeywell,
  Motorola, Organon, Pfizer, Siemens

11
Future Events

• Too many to list (in the Aug 31 report)
• 27 already in an advanced stage of planning
• Through to June 2004
• Including
• Training on GT3, Condor, OGSI .NET
• Miron Livny public lecture
• Committed to supporting WWW conference in 2005
• See www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/
• Suggestions are always welcome.

12
Visiting Researchers
David Maier Oregon Health Science University, USA Jun/Jul- 02
Greg Riccardi Florida State University, USA Jun/Oct-02
Chip Watson Jefferson Lab, USA Aug/02
Dave Richards Jefferson Lab, USA Sep/02
Dave Abel CSIRO, Australia Sep/02
Roy Williams Caltech, USA Oct/02
Steve Tuecke ANL, USA Jan/03
Herb Budd IBM Life Sciences Mar/03
Geoffrey Fox Indiana University, USA Apr/03
Richard Thomas The University of Western Australia Apr/03
Stephen Hall Lancaster University May/03
Jim Gray Microsoft Research Jun/03
Alex Szalay Johns Hopkins University, USA Jun/Jul 03
Roy Williams California Institute of Technology Jun/03
Greg Riccardi Florida State University Jul/03
Arthur Nicewick Center for Advanced Technologies, Virginia USA Aug/03
Steve Tuecke Argonne National Laboratories Aug/03
Peter Lamb CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, Australia Aug/Sep-03
Beth Plale Indiana University Aug/Sep-03
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and of course

• Richard Baldock (MRC)
• Bob Mann (IfA)
• who have been 50 on secondment on the visiting
  researchers programme.
• All visitors are asked to produce a report and
  these will
• appear in the next annual report (in progress).
• Future Visitors
• Miron Livny, University of Wisconsin, October 03
• Rob Edwards, Jefferson Lab, Spring 04
• Engaging with SAB to generate more visitors

14
Conclusions

• We have consolidated our year 1 activities
  (workshops, research)
• as well as expanding into other areas (training,
  international) and have achieved a steady state
  for this level of staffing.
• We have a booking for 2005 (and 2009) already
  it is important to take a long-term view.
• Until now we have largely been responsive to
  requests for events, but we are implementing
  formal evaluation methods and we will become
  selective.

15
Website

• Now 3 Gigabytes in size.
• Moved to our own servers on May 28, 2003
• Some redesign of appearance in the last few
  months
• Constant development and improvement of structure
  as our role develops

16
Basic Statistics 1

• Since going live in 2001 (figures in last week
  to 29 September)
• gt 2 million successful requests (hits)
  transferring 100 gigabytes of data
• Average hits per day 2847 (4954)
• Distinct files served 17,016 (2546)
• to 65,175 (2564) distinct hosts
• Average data transferred per day 140 MB (373 MB)

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Basic Statistics 2
18
Web Hits - Domain
19
Web Hits - Organisation
20
Web Volume - Directory(after move to NeSC
servers)
21
Web Volume - File type
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Supporting the Communityhttp//www.nesc.ac.uk/res
ources/

• SIGs
• e-Science Data mining (Bob Mann)
• e-Science Project Management (Tony Linde)
• e-Science Visualisation (Ken Brodlie)
• NeSCForge
• QCDGrid (ILDG)
• Astrogrid (under consideration)
• Early days for statistics we will implement a
  measuring method.

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Web Conclusions

• 51 of our requests are from the .uk domain
• 18 from commercial
• Almost 90 of requests are for .pdf and .ppt
  files i.e. talks and presentations

• Next Steps
• Implement a mirror at AN Other site (urgent)
• Improve visibility of Research area
• (Funded) indexed UK e-Science bibliography

24
Staff

• Relatively stable after a small expansion in
  January 2003. New posts in the last year were
• Dave Berry and Richard Sinnott
• Receptionist (Jennifer Hurst) at eSI
• University of Edinburgh extended contracts of key
  fixed-term staff to July 2006. University of
  Glasgow position still being discussed.
• Staff appraisal has been implemented, and the
  first round is nearly complete.
• The training manager (JISC post) interviews
  were held last Friday and we are about to
  appoint.

25
Buildings

• eSI Exclusive use of building from August 2002.
• eSI Training room for 20 implemented in December
  2002.
• UoE Expanded to the basement of Old College in
  February 2003.
• UoG Opening of the e-Science Hub in September
  2003, including offices and further training
  space.
• We have filled all available space again.
  Discussions for further space expansion are under
  way .

26
Finances
27
Finance

• NeSC core is projected to balance to 0 within 1k
  at end of Year 3.
• Access Grid budget (3 built) is overspent by 17k.
• eSI projections show that in the final year we
  will have available for expenditure
• 137k for the events programme this will be
  enough. The year 2 high level of expenditure was
  incurred in outsourcing training.
• 50k for the visitors programme the same as in
  year 2.

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Finances continued

• How we are keeping eSI costs down
• We have just completed a competitive tender
  process for the provision of catering (a large
  component of eSI expenditure 50 k per annum),
  as well as self-service coffee machines.
• The use of overtime and temp staff (in lieu of
  hiring additional staff) in high volume periods.
• All purchasing is done through the Universities
  negotiated contracts.

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Administrative Support for the Core Programme

• Grants managed
• GridNet
• eSTORM, eSTORM2
• All Hands Meeting
• Paper submission and CD production
• Clerical support at the event
• Web
• Secure website
• Consolidated image of UK e-Science programme

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• Finish